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study of crustal magnetism

Assuming that the oceanic crust is indeed made of basalt intruded in an episodically reversing geomagnetic field, Drummond H. Matthews of the University of Cambridge and a research student,
Frederick J. Vine, postulated in 1963 that the new crust would have a magnetization aligned with the field at the time of its formation. If the magnetic field was normal, as it is today, the magnetization of...

theory of marine magnetic anomalies

It remained for English geologists
Frederick J. Vine and Drummond H. Matthews and Canadian geophysicist Lawrence W. Morley to put these observations together in a theory that explained marine magnetic anomalies. The theory rests on three assumptions: (1) that Earth’s magnetic field periodically reverses polarity, (2) that seafloor spreading occurs, and (3) that the oceanic crust is permanently...

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